http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=1755139666841541603 about a dream: June 2009

Friday, June 26, 2009

sorry it's been so long...

...unpacking has been hectic, we were having a wonderful time with erik, isabelle and chester, it was windjammer days, grandma and grandpa's house is still much more fun than ours, betsy and elias are here, we have a swingset, and then i got sick. so, blogging has been pushed almost off of my list. even now, my loud typing might wake margarete up, as she is sleeping in the pack n play in the living room. so i'm risking much to bring you this non-update.

nick and i got the girls down early tonight (and little maggie actually stayed asleep, she must be getting over her cold), so we got a lot of unpacking done. now i'm going to go eat pretzels and peanut butter with nick. i promise that there will be photos and tales of the girls' cuteness soon!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

we are in damn good shape, packing-wise. hooray!!

(just a quick note as there's still a little bit to do, but it'll all be done by the time erik gets here. his flight is delayed an hour, so he'll be here 11:30-ish).

nina's graduation on wednesday was adorable, i will post up videos and pictures later. then today a bunch of us went over to an indoor playground so the kids could have some fun (it poured all day), and that was a great time too. jack tried to plant a goodbye kiss on nina but she pulled the old duck and turn. it was hysterical. and maggie spent a half an hour on the trampoline. we got into a tickle fight on it, and she tried to tickle ethan and mrs. weng. she moves her little fingers and says "di-ckle di-ckle!!" it's too cute!!

Sunday, June 14, 2009

guess who?



it's nina of course, but the first time i saw this photo i thought it looked shockingly like me. it was the first time i really saw a resemblance between me and nina. how cool!

the girls are helping us pack


Thursday, June 11, 2009

we're having a nephew!!



we were brainstorming names this morning. nina suggested marcus (yesterday she said ethan, which admittedly is a good name for a cousin). maggie floated ah-dah. i like the spelling ah'dah better. ha!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

packing, slowly but surely

we're doing a little bit every night. we're working on the little odds and ends first, which is good. usually we do the big things first and all those little odds and ends end up taking ten times longer than we think they're going to take. not this time! we're doing little bits every evening. the shoes yesterday, fragile things today... my goal by monday is to have only toys, clothing and a few plates and cups left. the kitchen will essentially be closed. we'll see how this goes.

the girls enjoy packing. maggie's hobby happens to be putting things into other things. usually she likes to drop things in the hampers (crayons are a fun one, fortunately i've gotten them all out before they go through the laundry). dropping things into boxes is a big hit. nina likes it too, especially if she can toss stuff in. as long as she's having fun, right?

someone is interested in the table! if we sell that our only big item left to unload is the TV. excellent!!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

allow me to walk you through our mornings...

maggie is almost always the first to wake up in the morning here at the Halter household. i wake up next, because i sleep with maggie and she hits me in the face, makes noise, or just squirms around until i wake up. i try to get her to go back to sleep so i can doze for a few more minutes, but it almost never works. so i slowly drag myself out of bed. well, our little maggie has figured out that nina and papa are still sleeping in nina's room (you know, of course. don't all papa's flee their beds for more space when their nursing one-year-olds get into their bed in the middle of the night? no? oh, hmm, well, lucky us then!). she also, apparently, thinks they're a lot more fun than just boring old mom. so every morning now she pushes the door open and yells at them. i can't stop her! if i try, she just screams from the living room, which wakes them up anyway. there is no distracting her. this morning, she started pulling the covers off of nick when he didn't get right out of bed. it really is hilarious.

we all slept in a bit this morning though because we were up in the middle of the night with the loudest thunder i've ever heard. it was as loud as when the lightning hit the tree at mom and dad's house. explosions of thunder. did you ever see war of the worlds (tom cruise version)?? it was like that. car alarms were going off with every clap (i can't even call them claps. they were explosions.) nick and i knew it was a doozy headed our way when we could see the lightning light up our room but not yet hear the thunder. you know when you see the lightning so bright before you can hear any thunder that it's bad. so, we were worried that nina might really freak out but thank god she didn't! i guess she's not afraid of thunder any more. she put her hands over her ears and tried to fall back asleep. she was more annoyed about the thunder than anything else. little maggie was a bit spooked though. i was holding her in the living room because i wanted to watch the lightning, but the first flash made her startle, so i took her back to bed.

on another note, nina thinks that comic books are called conic books. it's so funny.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

busy weekend!

yesterday we went to costco, played at our playground, went to rainey park and played in the sprinklers with lucia and penelope, then went out to the new beer garden with the manzis, wengs, and mascias. exhausting but fun! the beer garden was an outdoor kind of affair, with lots of picnic benches and many hip young people. we were pretty much the only people with kids there, and there must have been several hundred people.

today we played at the playground, cousin jessica came over, went back out to the playground, returned the highchair we borrowed from a family over on 52nd street at 31st ave, played at their playground, came home and played at ours a bit more, had a picnic dinner (in the living room), then did baths and bed.

we didn't pack anything this weekend, but perhaps tonight. the girls have been asleep for a while... we shall see. packing is slow, but progressing. i'm pretty sure we're going to plod along like this for another week and then panic and just throw things in boxes, willy-nilly. that's how it usually goes anyway.

maggie said banana today. she loves bananas. nina thinks american cheese is called "erik cheese" and was asking for erik cheese all night. i told her it was "american" cheese but she said no, it's called erik cheese. never try to tell a 3 year old that she's wrong!

Saturday, June 6, 2009

a new look



nina decided yesterday morning that she wanted a haircut. it's so cute!

Friday, June 5, 2009

maggie's devilish side



maggie has a funny tongue that looks a bit forked some times. i am pretty sure it's because the piece of tissue that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth is either tight or extends pretty close to the tip of her tongue. tongue tie it's called. i googled it.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

maggie's word count

poor maggie, i'm always writing about the cute things that nina says but i've neglected to comment on what she's saying! i don't have an exact list like i did with nina, but here are the ones i can come up with:

mama
papa
nan nan (nina)
nana (nurse)
hi
bye
woof
pah (plane. she says the same word for helicopter too, but i'm letting that go.)
ba-buh (belly button)
ba-ba (baby. you need the context to tell these too apart)
bah (ball)
nah-nah (no no, she says this as she wags her little finger. which, by the way, is not googly. while our nina seems to have inherited nick's googly finger, maggie has my beautifully straight digits. she also seems to have my flared left rib, but we'll see how bad it is when she thins out. perhaps she's got some of my bone structure after all, under those delicious chubs! but i digress...)
baaa (like a sheep says)
once she said wa-wa when she wanted water
she's said chester before
she's tried to say grandma and grandpa before
she said anna on sunday, after anna had been here for 2 days. but it was after anna had left of course, so she didn't get to hear it. it was clear as a bell though!
of course there was that one time she said "not bad"
eye
gum. she was pointed to parts of my face (she knows nose, eyes, mouth), and i said "show me teeth" and she touched (stabbed) my gums and said gum. i was like, ooooooook. it was another one of those plain as day words.

that's all i can think of right now. it's actually more words than i thought she had. she doesn't use them as often as nina did, but that makes sense. she's much more concerned with playing with nina than she is with talking to me.